0:01Do you ever put yourself there? Like imagine that like this could be my kid or whatever if I lived in a different place.
0:08>> As a father, I do that all the time. And I and it's it's hard not to because you have to have if you have any empathy at all.
0:15You you have to understand and appreciate this kid's pain. And you know, also I've talked to people who were victims of of the uh the terrorist attack on Israel and in October. Uh, and I it just makes me think that one thing that comes back to me over and over again is there has to be a better way than than violence. And that's true for the terrorist organizations who, as they have ultimately discovered, violence doesn't really achieve their ends. It just creates more victims. But it's also true when you're dropping bombs instead of the messy work of diplomacy or using other levers to try to change conditions
0:49on the ground. Because once those drum bombs drop, you're you're creating conditions you can't control. That's right. And there are always shock waves and repercussions and things that come back to you in ways that you can't anticipate. I mean, we invested in in the in the 1980s in helping the Mojahaden, the sort of the uh the Islamic freedom fighters defeat a communist government in Afghanistan and thinking we going to give them Stinger missiles and and they're going to, you know, fight the communists there. It's then we could just wash our hands of it and and and what's the what was the result? We got al-Qaeda and we got 911
1:27because of um because we empowered those groups at the time. So it's, you know, it it just the thing I I just say again, it it's never the right way. It's never the easiest. It's it's it's much more important to kind of use those clunky but effective tools um of diplomacy and and you know, just trying to change things peacefully on the ground. How do we do diplomacy if if you don't allow one side to have their own government and their own state in whatever [clears throat] regions you're going to end up doing it like they they haven't allowed you have all the hardliners that have really existed across the spectrum in Israel
2:06over the years who for the most part yakine obviously got killed for considering this but like for the most part have said there can't be a state which means they can't have a military they can't have a centralized government which means >> it's a predisposed like you know What's going to happen? Of course, black market groups, terrorists, are going to take advantage of the situation. So, how do you fix it diplomatically if you don't at least start there?
2:30>> Yeah. And the Israelis complained that the Palestinians are not good partners, they're not reliable, but if you don't allow some kind of self-expression, then then that pen up anger finds a way to express itself. And >> and I I've >> I've was naive enough just because I cover these issues and and was a diplomatic reporter for a while and watched kind of peace talks and the you know the negotiation process between Israelis and Palestinians and as as as grim as it seemed and hopeless and and kind of stuck in, you know, endless mire as it seemed at times, there was always a sense that eventually we're moving
3:02this way that eventually there's going to be a day when there's going to be a handshake and there's going to be, you know, a way for Palestinians to have some kind of control over their lives.
3:12in their government. Now, there's just there's not even any discussion of it.
3:15It feels like that's completely withered on the vine. Um, you know, the the the Saudis kind of use it as leverage every now and then and say there's going to be a kind of a peace settlement. The region has to be an Isra or Palestinian state.
3:27But the Israelis are making no effort now. And in even among the population, it's it's lost support. But you just can't ignore the fact that you've got what 3 or 4 million Palestinians, many of them living within your border.
3:39They're not going away. So you have to find some way to to accommodate them and to kind of give them sort of the apparatus of a state so they can function as a normal society. Otherwise, you know, [snorts] you just you're stuck with an aparttheid state that's just an unstable and is volatile and is eventually going to blow up on you.
3:56>> Yeah. Well, you've written in the past before the one we're going to talk about today, you've written a couple books, including a Pulitzer winner, Black Flags, which is in our 10 recommended books on the newsletter, by the way.
4:08Link in [snorts] description down below.
4:10But I always recommend this to everyone because it's such an amazing book. These two books though happen to have the line of you get in a really interesting high place source which is the king of Jordan who I mentioned a little bit ago where you know this guy's obviously lived an interesting life. You and I have talked about him in the past, but as I said, he's been someone who demonstrabably over the past 25 years has almost been like a Nostradamus. Every time there is a major thing that's about to happen in the Middle East, he's kind of over the target with how things are going to go.
4:44It was no different in the days after October 7th, which we've talked about a bunch on the podcast before, you know, to where he was like, "This this is going to be an ethnic cleansing and everything." So, have you had a chance to talk to him? Yeah, I do stay in touch with him and his people, too.
4:59>> What's he thinking?
5:01>> So, here's a guy, and I I don't want to put words in his mouth and and sort of suggest that I know everything he's thinking, but what's what's been conveyed to me very powerfully is the anguish that he feels over what's happened in his neighborhood. And he's a, you know, he's he's a military guy by training. Uh, and he's done a lot of he's kind of personally involved in in doing sort of aid drops to to Gaza. So, he does a lot of overflights. He goes on the planes and kind of, you know, sits in the back where the pallets go out the back door and and get parachuted down to Gaza.
5:38>> He's dumping the pallet.
5:39>> Yeah, he's he's been he's dumping. Yeah, he's he's badass that way.
5:42>> Remember he bombed the dude who burned the ISIS guys who burned his pilot? Yep.
5:46He flew the he flew the actual plane.
5:48>> He is uh like he said, he's he's uh and his father was the same way. his father was like a helicopter pilot, airplane pilot and they're all kind of daredevils in their own way and interesting he's he can be get very emotional about it but the >> one of the most powerful stories that has been shared with me and I won't don't like talk about specifics of conversations and sourcing but the experience of flying over Gaza is like flying over Dresden after World War II and just seeing the miles and miles of just well it's not a big place but just just endless devastation And he his sentiment about that is that
6:25when the rest of the world can see what really happened, when reporters are finally let in to take pictures on the ground, they won't believe it. That you won't, you know, he had tremendous problems with Hamas. He thought they were evil and and and you know, a terrorist organization did not should not ever been allowed to control politically Gaza and they were absolutely to blame for what happened on October 23rd.
6:51But he, you know, having witnessed the destruction that followed, he just emotionally just devastated by it. And and he's, you know, one of the ones who's kind of has to be responsible for putting the pieces back together.
7:05And initially the kind of the signals from Washington is, well, we're just going to dump all this on your lap.
7:09We're going to see if we can force Jordan to accept, you know, all these Palestinian refugees as >> being citizens of of your country. And you can imagine that if somebody said, "Well, US, you have to take the population of Haiti because they're they're destitute. They've, you know, they don't have a functioning government. So, we're just going to append, you know, those millions of citizens to to the United States." No country would accept that.
7:33>> Remember what he said, too, at the be before they were even doing that when they said, "Will you take them in?" And he said, this was like October 20th or something like that. It was it was in the weeks after October 7th. I'll never forget this, >> but he said, "If I do that, >> I will give the hardliners of the Israeli government exactly what they want."
7:54>> They will ethnically cleanse the place because you think they're going to let him back.
7:58>> They've been uh this the hard right in the in the cabinet make no bones about the fact that they see, you know, a greater Israel project that includes Israel completely, you know, taking control of all those those occupied territories and >> Jordan, by the way.
8:14>> Yeah. And probably too. I mean, that's that's on the map for some of them, but at least West Bank and and and Jerusalem. And they feel like they've been sort of divinely appointed um to have that dominion to to be able to control those territories. And so, they don't [snorts] they're they're they're not thinking about any kind of future for the Palestinian people because they don't care about it. They don't see it as legitimate. And they're absolutely explicit about that. and and to to see those comments by people who are supposed to be responsible leaders in government in charge of ministries
8:46saying something so terrible, it just it's it's shocking to hear. But um yeah, the our our friend the king has his hands full at the moment. Plus, he's one of the countries, >> you know, like the Gulf Arabs and sometimes some cases even worse.
9:01>> His his country has really struggled because of this ongoing conflict >> economically. economically. I mean, terrorism, tourism is >> is dried up. Um, you know, it's it's hard to move goods internationally. So, commerce is has really been hit hard.
9:16Uh, this is a country that had has few resources. They don't have oil. Um, they've got a very educated um society.
9:24Uh, they've got really great natural resources. They've in sense they've got a wonder of the world, which is Petra, which is the most incredible place I've ever seen in my life physically. So they've got a lot to offer, but if people aren't going there, if they can't sell their goods, you know, the the economy begins to crumble. And they also have the burden of millions of refugees from Syria, from the Syrian fighting who are still there. There are even Iraqi refugees from from a war 20 years ago.
9:50Yeah. And they all kind of come to Jordan because it's safe and and stay and don't leave. And that becomes more mouths to feed, more drains on a on a country that has doesn't have enough water for its own people and they have really no place to turn to for it. They don't have rivers to speak of. Uh and and so it just their their problems just kind of build and build and build and you just wonder how sustainable it is.
10:13>> Does he have a leg to stand on when it comes to like I don't know coming to the US and being like what the [ __ ] [gasps] >> Yeah. You know, he he does in a sense that he's he's got a lot of respect. Uh I don't from the White House. It kind of depends on the day, you know, they see him as being a useful ally. We've got military bases there, so they're important to us, but they get disrespected a lot. I think uh on the hill, it's remarkable Republicans into Democrats. When he comes to town, people want to sit down with them and listen to him because >> he really has a has a read on what's happening in the region. He has
10:49>> uh and and a very sophisticated view because he's of the Arab world, but he's sort of western educated. He's he speaks some people would say better English than than Arabic. He understands us. Um he has and as you've said historically, he's had a pretty good sense of what is about to happen and kind of warns us when when we're about to fall into a cliff. Uh and so when he does come over, people people sit down with him. I just feel like he's he feels that in on in in important ways he's not being listened to and his country is suffering because of it.
11:23>> When you talked to him in the first book you wrote the triple agent about El Bellowy who was the guy who he was a Jordanian doctor who ended up becoming an al-Qaeda terrorist and blew up Coast. Was that the base?
11:38>> Yeah, CIA base. is a CIA base in in the Middle East where you know a lot of CIA people and some military people were killed. you then set out to write this book to understand what the hell happened here, which is where you came across the king. And obviously it it was embarrassing for him that someone from his country had done this. But you know, maybe for people out there who haven't heard some of our previous podcasts in the past, can you just explain who you learned Alboy was? And then I'd love for you to give what the king's perspective was on him becoming who he was.
12:13>> Yeah. So Baloi was one of these accidental terrorists. He's somebody who was you said he was a doctor. He's a Jordanian physician, a pediatrician. So he was western educated. He went to school in Turkey.
12:27Uh spoke good English, but also had a great deal of of sympathy for what was happening in in to Palestinians because his is uh you know these are his people too. So he would he'd watch the kind of fighting in Gaza. this is like 2008 time period and become really uh inflamed by it. And his outlet, the way this, you know, middle-aged, you know, or middle class doctor with two children was able to vent his rage was to was to basically create a um a podcast channel of sort of amounted to that. He had his own little, you know, blog of commentary, pictures, things he would post about about the fighting going on in in Iraq and
13:10Afghanistan.
13:11And uh he was doing it secretly under a fake name. So nobody really knew it was him. Uh and then one day the Jordanians discovered that this really uh incendiary blog was coming from a doctor living right under their noses. So they arrested him, uh threatened him with jail, got him to flip, and basically talked him into becoming an informant.
13:34>> Uh and as an informant, he decided that he would actually volunteer for a foreign assignment. He told them that I'm willing to go to Pakistan and become an uh you know an agent for you. Find out what's what al-Qaeda is doing. Find out what the Taliban is doing. So they send him off to Pakistan to be kind of this undercover agent as a doctor. He gets there and he actually it turns out he's his sympathy for al-Qaeda is never left and he becomes a uh a suicide bomber. Uh convinces the CIA that he's got important information about al-Qaeda's leadership. sets up a meeting with CIA officers in a base in
14:08Afghanistan, walks into this meeting with Americans with a with a bomb under his vest and blows himself up and kills seven Americans and and a Jordanian intelligence officers there too. So this was a remarkable story. It was like the single biggest um sort of worst casualty rate or the biggest highest death toll for the CIA since the 80s since the so the bombing of the of the of of the US embassy in Beirut back in 1983. Seven Americans killed at once. It just doesn't happen.
14:39>> And the the king's involvement became pretty important because for one the one Jordanian officer who was killed happened to be his cousin. So it was kind of very personal to him >> and his government had been involved, his intelligence agency had been involved in in setting up this this agent as as somebody who would help the Americans find al-Qaeda leaders. So he he felt very very deeply um affected by this whole thing. Um but you know that the Jordanians have a good story to tell in this because they they tried to get the Americans to be cautious in in who they believe. you know, you've got a
15:16source who's giving you good information, but do you really trust him? And especially if you haven't met him, which the Americans hadn't. And you know, the sort of the red teaming that went on that should have gone on uh to that might have identified the fact they had a double agent working um working with them was ignored. Uh and and so it became a big tragedy for the Americans and for the for the Jordanians, too.
15:38Obviously, he didn't like the guy and and didn't at all appreciate what he did for all the reasons you just laid out, but did you ever get to have a conversation with him that either went on the record or, you know, maybe didn't make the book that you can talk about where he looked at it and wondered about the greater problem of maybe even some people from his country thinking the same way because of other things that happened in the region?
16:03Yeah, I think his consistent message and his consistent warning to the Americans has been that you you can't kind of blunder your way into these things like the Iraq invasion, right, and not expect him that there to be blowback. And he actually personally warned uh President Bush before the invasion of Iraq in 2003 that this this is going to be opening a Pandora's box. You may think you can succeed militarily and defeat the Iraqi army and and you probably can, but don't think it's going to be that easy when you're done. And I think his his frustration with American policy is there's it's driven by these
16:47grand ideas and sometimes a very naive concepts of how we can, you know, change the region and make it more suitable to us. And often we just don't know what we're doing. We don't know what we're getting into. And then guys like him, uh, the king of Jordan and his his his sort of other countries in the region end up holding the bag. They end up paying the cost um that sometimes we walk away from things and go on with our our business and and they're stuck with these problems for decades.
17:16>> Yeah. How how do places like that feel about what they see in Syria right now?
17:22>> Cuz like obviously previous leadership wasn't very good. I think I think that's very fair to say.
17:28But you have what's his name? Al Jalani.
17:30Is that how you say?
17:30>> That's how it used to be called. That was Al- Shar.
17:33>> Al Shar, right? But used to be called that in his old days as a terrorist.
17:36It's like you have a guy that sitting on stage with Petraeus going, "Yeah, I hunted you 10 years ago. Nice to see you.
17:44>> Now he's visiting the White House."
17:45>> Like what would that again? Am I crazy to think that's a little nuts or a little suspicious? And they might be upset about that over there in other countries.
17:54>> This is a headnapping kind of moment. I I still I still can't take it all in because you're right. I mean, I did a lot of research on on this guy when he was known as Galani and when he was member of al-Qaeda and he was sent by what what we now know as ISIS into Syria to kind of create an army, the jihadi army to fight uh to fight the regime there and then to go on beyond that.
18:19>> Was he in this book?
18:20>> He is in the book. I took Yeah, he is in the in the second part and uh and it was crazy and I actually remember the moment um in 2012 when he he emerges as the leader of this al-Qaeda aligned force in Syria. It's a moment when we really knew we had a problem because Syria started as kind of a a civil war with you know protesters fighting the government and the government trying to uh you know repress them. very quickly you'd get all these other outside groups coming in becoming part of the fight and Julian Galani was the scariest of all because he was true al-Qaeda and he was coming in to create a a jihadi army and you
18:59know thinking of al-Qaeda having a a kind of a failed state in which they can operate and build an army and and amass weapons and then you know proceed to kind of carry out that their agenda however they want to do it. That's what Galani represented. One of, if not the most common DMs I get on Instagram are many of you asking me what my favorite books are. Well, today's your lucky day because if you use the link in my description below to join my newsletter, I'm going to give you my top 10 book recommendations right now. Also, if you'd like to join my clipping community for a chance to make money producing
19:32content from the show, you can do so via the Discord link in my description below. And finally, you can join my Patreon for early uncensored releases of the full episodes via the Patreon link in my description below. As always, please take one second to hit that subscribe button if you haven't already.
19:44I really appreciate that. Also, the like button is a big help and you can join my newsletter via the link in the description.
19:49>> And what was interesting is Baghdaddy, the leader of ISIS, decided that he wasn't moving fast enough and so they created a separate thing which became ISIS >> within within Syria. But Galani was hardcore and to think that now he's the kind of leader of Syria and and someone that we consider a friend and we invite to the White House and you know give him special um you know recognition. It just just just kind of boggles the mind. And I have to say he's been everything he's done up to now has been surprising. He's been you know a tolerant leader. He's no Democrat, but he's he's allowed in the sense he's allowed
20:31religious uh diversity. He's Yeah. I mean, there's there's instances where, >> you know, he's still surrounded by some of the his old friends from the old days, but at least he says the right things. Some, you know, Christians in Aleppo say he's been, you know, allowed them to put up Christmas decorations when after he came in and things they haven't been able to do for years. So, he at least is very good at playing the game of of seeming moderate. Maybe he's just very pragmatic and and and and has realized that if he wants to succeed, he needs to stop alienating everybody else around him the way that ISIS certainly
21:03always did.
21:05>> But um but you know, kind of you know, every time I see him speak, I I keep thinking this this guy was was a serious terrorist. He was on the on the most wanted list. He was, you know, we considered him the worst of the worst.
21:19And now he's leader of a country which is just Yeah. playing basketball. Yeah.
21:24So, >> it's nuts. It's It's one of these things that I >> I didn't think for honestly I didn't think that that the Assad regime was was gonna ever be driven out. I just thought I didn't I didn't >> It seemed like around 2013 2014 when when it just it seemed when the when the Iranians and the Russians both decided they were all in and keeping Assad in power, there just didn't seem to be an exit. um there wasn't any way for him to be driven out. The Americans and the other neighbors weren't willing to invest enough of in the opposition to kind of drive him out. So, it's just going to be this permanent bad situation
22:03and a kind of a military stalemate with parts of Syria still um run by opposition groups, particularly by Galani's organization, which was kind of al-Qaeda related group.
22:14>> But they also had hundreds of like subgroups duking it out like it was Mad Max Fury Road. Yeah. in Syria this whole time, which that was the one part that never made sense to me because that was going on for so many years. I'm like, what does >> how much does Assad even get to control?
22:29>> Yeah.
22:30>> You know, it's like, is he collecting taxes from people from the Kurds in the south? I some I feel like those checks are going to bounce if he gets them at all.
22:36>> Yeah. He had had some of the cities in the Artland and the coast and big chunks of the rest of the country were not under Syria control and and ISIS was heavily uh you know involved in the eastern part of the country. uh these al-Qaeda related groups are in the north backed by Turkey in some cases and and like you're right hundred other literally hundreds of of subgroups and local militias some of them with their own kind of funding from Gulf Arab countries and it was just lawless kind of MadMax kind of place and >> the one thing that Golani/ Alsharah has done is is mostly consolidated control so it's uh
23:19you know it's a it's a unified government for the most part but it's it seems very very precarious to me >> when you say consolidated control >> that is right he is like I said he's no democrat he's an autocratic leader but he's >> kind of like the dictator >> right but he knows he looks good in a suit [snorts] knows how to say the right things at a at a at a conference shake hands with diplomats >> so he's been surprising but uh yeah I just I I'm not completely convinced that he's a different guy than he used to I would pay to be a fly on the wall in those conversations once they go in the rooms after doing the cameras where
23:54someone says, "Listen up, motherfucker."
23:56>> Yeah. Yeah. No doubt.
23:57>> All right. All right. You You killed 10 of your secretaries. All right. Fine.
24:01You do this [ __ ] >> Yeah.
24:03>> Like it's got to be some sort of business agreement there for sure.
24:06>> I think so. And they're And I must say in that region, they're they're used to kind of these complexities and kind of working out as businessmen >> and you don't cross certain lines otherwise you get whacked. It's it's very mafia like.
24:18>> That's another argument though. Sim when you look at that country and you know the outcome's still kind of up in the air with what it'll be. Maybe there's a couple okay signs right now. But that was a country ravaged by sanctions again that turned into that crazy war zone arguably >> because the sanctions pushed them there.
24:38I mean you were reporting on literally witnessing all the trucks coming across with what was it? prank or >> Yeah, it was Yeah, it was Capagon this weird slightly I guess a bit like meth. It's it's this strange synthetic drug that Yeah. sanctions dried up sources of income for the for the Syrian regime. And so they essentially turned to Capagon to create um revenue for themselves and so became basically the world's biggest narco state and it massive amounts of drug manufacturing with shipments of you know millions and millions of these captain tablets heading out all over the world particularly in the Middle East but it
25:16just was that was you can't say it was it's a direct result of uh of sanctions but it was certainly a side effect.
25:23>> Yes. And it's that's that begs the question. It's like how much of the whole like sanction strategy is just trying to big dick people you maybe righteously don't like by the way >> when you can take a bad situation and technically make it way worse by doing that. How else do you solve it other than like invading the country?
25:45>> Sanctions became kind of like the easy fix for us because it didn't require any real effort. We don't have to send troops anywhere. we can just say, "Well, we're going to sanction this country."
25:54And and then we create a sanctions regime that stays in effect for decades.
25:58It loses its effectiveness. People find ways to get around it. And then it just becomes kind of a shell of a policy, kind of a way to make us feel good about things without doing anything good and sometimes doing things kind of bad for creating a drug a drug economy that didn't exist.
26:15>> Yeah, that's uh unfortunate, but we'll see how it shakes out. I guess that said, been waiting on this book. It's time to get to it a little bit.
26:25>> Okay.
26:26>> So, I had to keep my mouth shut on this, like I said, for about 2 and a half years. You told me about this, like I'm working on this thing. And little did I know, you and I recorded, it was like that Friday in March 2024. It was like the 22nd or something like that. And I guess you got on a plane a day or two later.
26:44>> Yep. for Paris and went and visited Carlos the Jackal in prison. Is that correct?
26:49>> That's right. So, March 2025.
26:52>> Okay. Who was Carlos the Jackal? Let's start there for people who don't know because this this is a very important story that as you said ties into very modern day issues right now. It's a symbolic time for it to come out.
27:04>> So, if we can roll back the clock a little bit. So, most of us basically grew up in the 911 generation. So we think of terrorism, we think of al-Qaeda and 9/11. There was a whole other generation, and I'm old enough that I remember it, but back in the 60s and 70s, there was this terror wave that involved hijackings of planes, hostage taking, murder of Israeli athletes in the the 1972 Olympic Games. This it was an awful period. And any any air travel involved the risk of of hijacking or worse. And of that generation of terrorists, the one that became internationally famous was this guy who became known as Carlos the Jackal, who
27:45became so the most famous of the Palestinian militants, even though he wasn't Palestinian at all. He was from Venezuela. He's some crazy kid who moved himself to the Middle East and thought he'd become a a you know a gorilla freedom fighter and ends up becoming a a sleeper agent for the Palestinians and then goes on to do one outrageous uh terrorist attack after another uh and then elutes uh capture for 20 years.
28:12essentially becomes famous in part because he was so good at getting away with it and just living like a rock star, living in fabulous hotels and and meeting amazing women and and drinking the best liquor and just had this almost fablelike existence. And this is the guy that uh you know was really the international face of terrorism throughout the the last century the 70s and 80s before bin Laden before bin Laden basically changed how we think of terrorism. this was the guy bin Laden happened. We kind of forgot about him because he was by that time sitting in a in a prison in France and living not too
28:48badly if you're if you're going to be in a prison. But uh >> French prisons are nice.
28:52>> French they're not so bad. The one that I saw um where I visited him >> used to it was actually originally a convent and it was built in the middle ages. You kind of convent turn prison.
29:02is maybe not too big of a stretch, but he he's he was captured in in the '90s in a in a really dramatic fashion that we can talk about if if you want, but um he he's not allowed to speak very much because he murdered a lot of French people. Uh a lot of his terrorist attacks were in France and the French don't like him getting the microphone. They don't like him being able to talk about his, you know, glorify his past. And so it took a very long time to get permission to get to talk to him. But once I did, it was just this moment that I'll never forget.
29:37Kind of sitting in this prison and in comes this man who was when I was a kid the most famous terrorist in the world and now he was 75 years old and kind of an old man but still kind of scary in his own way.
29:47>> How first of all, when did you first hatch the idea that you wanted to write a book on him and how soon after that did you think in your head, damn, I wonder if I could talk to him? So it's it's crazy how these ideas start sometimes. And for me, you know, the jackal was a name I remembered, you know, almost like maybe kids who grew up in the 911 generation have this sense of of Bin Laden being this boogeyman and then there was an international search for him and they found him and killed him and so on. So Carlos to me was kind of like that. I remembered some of this the stories about him when I was young.
30:18And then when I was, you know, a reporter working as a terrorist in the Middle East, I kept running into his trail in weird ways. And you know, as you know, I spent a lot of time in Jordan, but I would talk to Jordanian intelligence guys and he said, "Oh, yeah, you know, Carlos Jackal was here for a while."
30:32>> He kind of smuggled himself into our country. We didn't know he was here.
30:35>> And once we discovered it, we cultivated a relationship with them. We used to talked to one guy who >> his job was to bring liquor over to Carlos the Jackal and his little villa where he stayed in Aman and try to figure him out to what is he doing here?
30:50What is he what is he up to? Is he planning a terrorist attack? And they tried to befriend him.
30:55>> Really? Yeah. Rather than arrest him.
30:57>> Rather arrest him. And that becomes kind of a a contentious point in the book because the Jordanians >> should have told their American friends about this their secret guest. And that eventually happened, but it didn't happen right away. But in the meantime, they essentially got this amazing debrief with Carlos because they would sit down with him, get him super drunk, and just get him to talk about the [ __ ] that he did. And so the guys that I I would talk to, these are just regular sources, had the most amazing stories about Carlos the Jackal that I'd never heard before. I never knew anything
31:28about this this part of his life.
31:30>> Did they like him?
31:31>> They the thing is you can't that's a hard thing to say like him. But it's he's a very charming guy. and you and then the the people that would describe to me their meetings with them after they overcame their initial fear and there's one guy's literally there's there's this scene in the book where this Jordanian who meets Carlos for the first time he's in an office and he's got his pistol out under the desk because he's so afraid this guy's going to come out and just gun him down. But after they figured out that he was he was pretty much harmless. He wasn't going to do anything to them. They were
32:04just fascinated to hear his stories and just kind of because I'd say he he has the wildest stories in the world. He's lived the life of a rockstar and being a slash terrorist and and and internationally wanted fugitive and to get to spend time with him was fascinating for them.
32:21>> Now this is a guy though, like you said, who was born in Venezuela.
32:25His father's a communist attorney in pre-communist Venezuela is not a communist country at the time. And he names his three kids after each part of was it Lenin's name?
32:35>> Lennon's name. So Lennon's this founder of the Soviet Union's real name was Vladimir Ilich. Sorry, Ilitch Uliano. So he named his three sons Lenon, uh, Vladimir and then Ilitch. And so we kind of had all parts of the name covered.
32:50And that just a testament to the guy to the father's devotion to communism. He considered literally considered Linen the most important figure in all of human history. And so his his kids' names were an homage to his communist hero >> and Carlos got the middle name. he got he got the middle name even though he was the oldest kid and um kind of grew up with that legacy and was influenced by that but also by kind of revolutionary fervor in Latin America at the time because this was 60s so time of you know there's communist uprisings throughout Latin America there are communist you know militants in the jungle this very famous
33:31character at the time named Shay Gavvara who was like a >> swashbuckling you know uh Latin American revolutionary and you can see movies about him. You see his face on on on on t-shirts. He was a very photogenic, good-looking guy. And he was Carlos's real hero. He wanted to be this, you know, adventurer, revolutionary, you know, larger than- life character, beautiful women surrounding him. That was his goal in life was to become that guy. Young Carlos though who's looking up to Cheay Gavara.
34:04>> Was it really because of the things Cheay Gavara emoted that you just laid out and the lifestyle he had or did he actually look into say the policies that he backed and the politics that he had?
34:16>> Yeah.
34:17>> And vibe with that.
34:19>> So Carlos would always say the right things like I'm for the common man. I'm a Marxist revolutionary.
34:27reality was Carlos didn't really give a crap about any of that. Carlos wanted to be a hero. He wanted to be a chevara. He wanted to have his picture on on uh t-shirts. If he'd been living today, he'd have an Instagram account. He'd be all over Tik Tok. He'd be promoting himself and his own brand. Back then, you couldn't do that, but he just wanted to build an image.
34:50>> Yeah. and ended up getting a a sexy nickname that he didn't plan on having.
34:54But once he was called Carlos the Jackal, then >> suddenly there's a whole, you know, mystique that comes with that.
35:01>> Oh, yeah. You can't get laid with that name. I can't help it.
35:03>> Yeah. You can't can't Well, if you can't get laid as Elage, cuz that's just kind of a strange name. But if you're Carlos the Jackal, man, yeah, you could you could have films made about him and and you actually, of course, that went on to happen. the the Born identity series that was initially a novel series by Robert Lulham. He he based his bad guy, his bad character was was Carlos the Jackal. He created the entire persona of this >> this uh villain in all all three of his novels based on on Carlos. And >> yeah, he had massive charisma.
35:35>> Absolutely. And you could still see it, I must say. Even as an old man, he kind of walks in a room and you you can see there's some there's there's a charm, but there's kind of a presence. And God knows I didn't admire him. And he said lots of things, you know, in our meeting that reinforce the the fact that he is he's essentially a criminal narcissist.
35:54That's he has that kind of brain. Uh doesn't regret any of the the terrible things that he did. Feels like he's a hero in his own mind. But he is he is a charming bad guy. And that's, you know, even the Jordanians who are trying to debrief him in in the in the 90s, they could certainly see that that he's, you know, as though as one guy who became a senior official in the Jordanian intelligence agency said, >> you can't help but like him. You know, I I just liked him and u and was almost sorry to see him go. [snorts] So, you're talking with your guys and they're whispering about this and telling you the stories in the 2010s
36:31while you're working on other things and then you end up finishing Red Line, the book on on Syria. And was it pretty much right after that where you're like, I got to go look at this again or >> there was another reason too. So, I have what you'll see in all my books is I I have a a kind of a writing style that's it's narrative non-fiction and it's usually very character- driven. So the best book for me is one that tells a larger story but so there's a central character that propels the narrative and the the story I wanted to tell is is another origin story. Black flags is kind of an origin story of ISIS and
37:09where it came from. The jackal story allows me to tell sort of explain how we got international terrorism, how that arose in the Middle East in the six 60s and 70s and who were the important characters and and why it was able to flourish and eventually why it failed because these groups always overreach their violence always turns people off and they end up kind of becoming the reason for their own demise. But Carlos, luckily for me, is in all the right places at all the right times. And he allows me to kind of string together, you know, a bigger story about this important development in our in our modern history with a
37:46singular figure in this in the middle of it who's >> you can't take your eyes off him because he's just always doing something outrageous.
37:54This this is also a guy though that is still living when you're writing about him and obviously we're going to talk about you going to talk with him and everything but is there a difference in the approach for you from like a storytelling and writing perspective when you are dealing with someone who's still alive especially when you know you may be having a conversation >> that's really appealing because there are parts of the Carliff's story that had remained a mystery for a long time and because people had kind of forgotten about him after 911 11 there was a lot of new material that had come out of you
38:27know archival material from East Europe for example used to be kind of a a pet so the communist governments of Eastern Europe in the 90s and 80s kept him almost like their their little their little dirty secret we've got Carlos and Jackal living with us and we we could stop them if we wanted to but we don't we'd let them go out and bomb things in France and just live a crazy life in our own countries >> and a lot of the sort of the files from that time only started coming out in the late 90s and in the early 2000s. Um, you know, some of his former henchmen and and closest associates are still around
39:03so they they can be debriefed. But Carlos himself obviously knows a lot.
39:07And I felt there was just a finally a critical mass of material to kind of take a new look at the life of this guy who was once on in, you know, top of mind. People, you know, he was a household name. And to reconstruct, you know, how he came to be, how Carlos the Jackal came to exist into light of all this new contextual material just seemed very attractive. And I just felt that >> people used to care a lot about Carlos.
39:34And if they reread his story in in the in the context of how we got to where we are with terrorism and these other international threats, it'd be worth a story worth telling and it was a lot of fun to report. I must say it was just endlessly fascinating.
39:48>> How did you get to talk to him?
39:50>> So the hard part that well let's just start with the easy part. The easy part was getting Carlos to say yes. And it was a matter of I contacted his lawyer, explained who I am, talked about my books, and I said, "I'd love to meet your guy." And and Carlos has a lawyer.
40:04Carlos's lawyer passed along the message. Carlos writes back said, "Sure, Washington Post guy. I'll I'll meet with you." He does not publicity shy. He's the opposite. He likes he likes attention.
40:15>> He loves the idea of getting an interview. But the problem, as I mentioned, was the French did not want to let me talk to him. They don't want to let anybody talk to them except under very restrictive conditions. So I had degree. There's no recording equipment.
40:28There's no camera taken into prison. I only had a pencil and a notebook.
40:32>> Pencil and a old school.
40:34>> All really old school. Writing things down as fast as I could.
40:37>> Like transcribing. And then after it's over, going back to my hotel, just trying to doing a a Julian Dory and trying to [laughter] photographically remember everything that happened and every nuance and every wrinkle in his brow, you know, tried to kind of recreate every bit of that. But even with that, I mean, that one of the restrictions I had to agree to was this was not going to result in a Q&A interview because they didn't the French did not want me to have this verbatim, you know, conversation with with Carlos that would allow Carlos to reinterpret history. M >> so it would had to be you know I was
41:08able to use little snippets but I couldn't quote him extensively.
41:12>> Um but >> how does that even work? That seems really subjective to you know >> Yeah. And and it's frustrating for sure.
41:20But on the other hand my whole purpose in meeting him was I had some things I wanted to ask but even with those things I didn't think I would trust anything Carlos said. He's going to exaggerate.
41:31He's not going to tell me the truth. So, it was more to kind of get get him to kind of fill in color a little bit of of the blank spaces that I had it in my own narrative of what happened, but also just to kind of get a measure of the man. And that was very important mentally and getting my head around the project and writing about him and his life is to see him as a 75year-old man.
41:54And then you'll see in the book, I mentioned kind of briefly this encounter uh that I had with him in the prologue.
42:01And then at the end of the book, it's it's, you know, the bad days are over.
42:06He's been in prison for a long time. And here I am face to face with the man for the first time.
42:10>> And so there's it's, you know, people have read this part of the book say it's kind of a very >> profound moment where where after you've read the story of his life, you're you're sitting there looking at the guy eyeball to eyeball.
42:22>> I like how you did that.
42:23>> Yeah. So it's it's it's was a it was a great way to end up you know after telling a story to kind of like what did what did it amount to what was it how did it matter and >> you get a sense of that when you sit down and look at the guy face to face >> well I'm really curious about this process though to even get there with the French so it's easy on his end he's like [ __ ] it I'll do it but had he really talked to anyone except that one French journalist >> that this one French journalist had most of the interviews views that have existed over the past few years, decades really, >> have been
43:00secretive. So, they weren't nobody got permission to talk to him.
43:05>> Uh, but managed to find ways to do it.
43:07The one case was a French journalist who basically kind of came at him as just, well, I'm I'm a member of the public that wants to meet, you know, I I've got my own personal reasons for wanting to meet him. And because she was a, you know, attractive woman, Carlos is a is a obsessive womanizer. So you just, you know, put a pretty face in front of him.
43:26He's very happy to talk to you.
43:28>> And she managed to kind of have many many visits with them. This was like back in the 2010s.
43:34>> That went past French Intel.
43:35>> Yeah. Yeah. So she just showed up like she's like she was like just like a fan or a member of his, you know, support group or something, but she she didn't do it as a journalist, but she ended up writing a book based in French based on her experiences with him. What was her name?
43:48>> Her name is Sophie Bonet. Bonet.
43:50>> Sophie Bonet. B O N E. Sophie.
43:52>> Yeah. So, she's a documentary filmmaker slashbookwriter. She's I've talked to her. She's um very interesting lady.
44:00This is She's older now, but she did it, you know, earlier in her career.
44:03>> Okay, there's DB. Um, and then later later on, in fact, I benefited from this one relate one interview that happened.
44:12There's an Israeli journalist who really wanted to talk to Carlos and he wasn't allowed to. So, he managed to talk of one of Carlos's attorneys. We had a couple, this one, he married actually.
44:25He married this his attorney. They had a kind of a prison ceremony and >> Oh, Carlos married his attorney. Yes.
44:31>> Is he still married to her now? She died about a year ago, but they were married for a long time. Uh, but he was able to, this journalist was able to talk the attorney into basically bringing, you know, she had a cell phone she was allowed to bring into the prison meetings with Carlos. She'd bring her phone in, she'd ring this journalist up and basically relay questions like, "Carlo, Carlos, what do you think of this or that, and he would reply into the phone, and the phone call was being recorded on the other end." Mhm.
44:57>> So this Israeli journalist very kind of >> tricky got got a pretty long interview out of them.
45:03>> They're not like that at all.
45:04>> Not at all. So I I I wanted to go through the front door, but this journalist, this Israeli journalist ended up doing a docu documentary film based on the guy's name is um Yuron Y a r o niski n i ki.
45:17>> And his documentary actually was released on Fox Nation earlier this summer. Mh.
45:22>> Um, it was Carlos in his own words, but it wasn't Carlos, you know, face to face. It was essentially a kind of a bootleg interview with the guy, >> but I ended up making friends with the journalist. We we we found out about each other's work and so we collaborated. I was on his his documentary as featured in a number of times >> and he shared all his transcript, so all the conversations. So, I had things that I could relate because of my conversation with with Carlos, but also had the benefit of many hours, I guess maybe more than 10 hours of of telephone conversations that he had. And what that
45:55all amounts to is you see a lot of things through Carlos's lens and you realize about half or more is just crap. But there are parts that, oh, we actually told the truth about this. So, it's kind of a fact check.
46:11Yeah. he could say certain things you could or certain things that he wouldn't have a reason to lie about because they're not flattering for him.
46:19>> And I ended up because of those interviews including Sophie had a pretty remarkable book and my own encounter and my own research and talking to CIA people and others who involved in capturing him had a ton of material and then it was just a matter of what what makes the best story. What are those?
46:37This is the thing about narrative non-fiction is you got you end up with a a lot of stuff but then you then almost like a filmmaker what is the most interesting story I can tell based on the facts that I know right >> and then you construct u the story out of it's all real facts but then you you have to kind of be the painter with a paintbrush and and that's right >> paint the picture >> this process to get to talk to him though where they came up with all these stipulations who are you talking to to do that like are you talking with French intellig igence or >> started started actually with the prison
47:09ministry. So there is a you know right to the people who run this one prison.
47:15>> It's called the Pi. It's the Mason central de PI but it's a little town uh outside Paris about 20 miles to the west of Paris.
47:25>> And um other fascinating thing about the prison it had this past as a convent but after when the Nazis took over the country it became like a Gestapo headquarters and they they killed and tortured members of the free French freedom movement there. So, it had this really crazy history, but that's what >> living with the ghosts when you're in there. Yeah.
47:43>> So, I I wrote to them and they said, "Well, you need to send us all this information and all these forms you need to complete." I did that and I waited and waited.
47:50>> What year did you 20 first year was 2024 when I just early 2024 >> when I first reached out and then there'd be like radio silence for months and I would send reminders, are you going to let me see him or not? And there would just be no reply. So I started kind of working through other, you know, angles, trying the French embassy in Washington, can they help me?
48:11And they were somewhat sympathetic. My second book, Black Flags, came out in French and had um actually was wellreceived in France. I did a lot of uh interviews. So I'm I'm I'm somewhat known there and they uh they they were helpful, but then it was like then there's just layers and layers of bureaucracy. There's the French Justice Ministry, which ultimately had to sign off. It it just took pressure on so many pressure points until finally I got a yes. And once I got the yes, I went right away to France because I was so afraid they're going to change their mind. And even to the moment I walked into that prison to have the interview,
48:47I was so afraid that somebody was going to back out. Carlos is going to be sick or was he going to change his mind, the French were going to decide they don't don't want me to talk to him after all.
48:56So part of the suspense was am I actually going to get to have this moment?
48:59>> You're in the story and that's what's cool. It's like you've written all these stories where you're reporting on it after the fact and going and visiting the places and living with the ghosts and trying to understand what happened there, which is what you do here. But then the culmination of it is you get to go directly to the source and it's like you are now the first person walking into your own book.
49:18>> Yeah. And it's the first time I've done that because I've always had this distance in my other books. I'm kind of writing and from a dispassionate, you know, third person voice. This the first time I said in a book, I I was there. I I saw him. I was sitting there and Carlos walks in.
49:33>> And so describing that moment was u becomes personal because I'm part of the story.
49:38>> Was it just one day with him in there?
49:41>> Yeah, I was.
49:41>> And how many hours did you have?
49:42>> I got like an hour and a half. That's all they would give me. So it was very compressed and it was frustrating because Carlos even though he's looks robust, you can see his starting to fade.
49:54>> He's 76, right?
49:55>> Yeah, he's 76 now. and he's as he would lose a thread in the conversation. He would repeat himself. And the other problem I mentioned he has an obsessive interest in women. There was a woman in the room and she happened to be a French min justice ministry official there kind of as a reminder uh to make sure I didn't do anything break any of my my promises. He she was 27 as I recall.
50:21He could not take his eyes off of her.
50:23And I would be talking to him. I'd ask him a question. He would ignore me. He's kind of facing the woman and saying things like, "Are you a real blonde?"
50:33[laughter] >> Still got that dog in >> just decorable. But you know the uh the French biographer, the woman I mentioned, Sophie Bunett said in her book, [snorts] >> she described it as almost that he is constantly on the hunt that any female within his view his sight in his range of vision was a potential target. And no matter how old, how young, just whatever the circumstances, he's just obsessed and he has to figure out does he have a chance with her? Is it somebody that's that's going to like him? uh and and you could see him even as an old man working it and trying to kind of impress this this young woman and
51:15very very annoyed by [clears throat] the fact that I was also in the room and just creating an obstacle to him potentially getting to meet this woman.
51:22So it was it was wild to see them see him kind of operate that way.
51:26>> That's crazy. You only got an hour and a half. I mean that's an hour and a half more than pretty much anyone has ever gotten. [laughter] But my publisher or editor of who's who worked with me through the publisher >> when we were talking about this and about possibility of the interview, >> he kept saying if you can get Carlos to grunt at you, then that's that's a victory. We just we just it just is important to have some personal connection with him. And I got a lot more than that. It was not what I had hoped to get. I hope to be able to maybe meet him several times over many hours and record a conversation. So, it was
51:57much less than that, but it was gratifying to succeed in at least making the meeting happen.
52:03>> Looking at his life, like just estimating it, I'd need four full podcasts.
52:08>> Yeah, you absolutely would.
52:09>> Yeah, I would need four three-hour podcasts with him. It would need to be about 12 hours to really >> Yeah.
52:15>> get down and dirty on the details from a storytelling stepbystep psychological profile like culmination of it all. And then you need a whole other episode at the end to say, "Well, in after my research, this was crap.
52:32This was [ __ ] that he didn't he made this up. This didn't really happen." Um, because that's the way it is with Carlos. He's he's uh he's not a reliable witness to his own life's events, >> right? You're plugging and playing like you said, as far as like things you already know, what information he can corroborate or where you know he's going to lie about something because you already have the other source. and asking about his how he was captured for example that becomes in Carlos's mind >> all about it was acts of betrayal people who one of the memorable lines that I was able to use was >> he you know his big regret in his life
53:05was he didn't kill more people and he should have killed those bastards who got him at the end and just uh was too slow on the draw.
53:12>> Yeah. One of those guys like another I used a line from the wire earlier but another famous line where he's like the game ain't in me no more.
53:21It feels like this is dude, the game is going to be in him till the day he drops.
53:26>> Which which I must say I'm I'm hearing recently that he's he's in >> further decline, that is he's his health is is >> waning. And so it could be that by the time Ezra still talking about the book, he might may not have him with us anymore, which is um a real possibility just because he's of that age. He's 76 and he's >> been in prison for a long time.
53:47>> Now, you knew you were going to maybe have like 90ish minutes or something like that. Yeah.
53:51>> So, obviously very different approach to what I do here where we're just talking all day and we see where it goes.
53:56>> I had >> you had to be very prepared, right?
53:58>> I had annotated notes. I had all these things I wanted to to try out on him.
54:03>> And like your conversations, it actually it becomes once you start with them.
54:07>> Sometimes the notes just get disregarded because he goes down a trail and then you think, well, okay, well, asking about this or I could tell this line of questioning is not going to be fruitful.
54:16He's not going to have anything to say or else he'll shut down. This was also the frustration. I would start to talk about an incident that, you know, I know a lot about and he would just say, "I don't remember." And and that would be it. And that no point in asking him anything else because he would just kind of clam up. He doesn't like to admit to things that he hasn't been convicted of. And there's certain things like you'll if you read the book you'll see that he [snorts] one of his big attacks in his historical career was bombing radio free Europe in Munich in in 1981. He set up this elaborate bombing. It doesn't go off
54:54quite like he intended, but he succeeded in bombing this US built, US-run international broadcaster and um creating a lot of damage, but he has never acknowledged having anything to do with it. And he denies it, you know, fusively because he's never been convicted of it. Uh and he doesn't want to have, you know, be on record of saying that he attacked this American facility because it could have consequences. have all kinds of evidence that it was him, that he did it, and uh but he just wasn't going to talk about it in that interview.
55:24>> A lot if if you talk to like or listen to a lot of great actors talk about roles where they play a villain or other [snorts] fellow great authors where they talk about writing about people who were objectively evil.
55:39Many of them will often go through how the approach when they're going through it is to not judge the person kind of suspend that so that in the actor's case they can actually feel and be in their bones and let out that performance and in the author's case they can actually do the same thing to be able to write about it factually and then they'll say afterwards then they can kind of judge it.
56:01>> Yeah.
56:02>> Yeah.
56:02>> What was your approach with him from that perspective?
56:06kind of the same dopey approach that I take to most of my interviews, which is I I just want to know. I'm not gonna I certainly can judge you, Carlos, because you've been a terrible human being, >> but I'm walking into this meeting as a very curious, interested person who just wants to know what happened.
56:25>> I want to give you the chance to tell me your story. And I find that people really respond to that even if they may be resistant in most cases to speaking to the press or to talking to an author.
56:37But if you come at it that you're not prejudging them and that you it's not about your ego because I I feel like that's should not be in the way of of a of a conversation that it should be about trying to get information and just say I am personally honestly curious to know what happened here. What really happened in 1975, Carlos, when you, as a 26-y old man, walked into the headquarters of OPEC, the International Oil Cartel, and proceeded to take the whole thing hostage. What were you thinking about? And who put you up to it? And I I could get him to ramble on about that because he's kind of proud of
57:14it. That's the one thing he's probably most known for.
57:17>> One of the most audacious terrorist attacks I've ever heard about.
57:20>> That's what he was wearing, right?
57:21>> That's what he was wearing. That's that's that that day he was wearing a >> funky uh beret because that was again like his hero um Chevara wore a was wore a black beret that was his uniform.
57:34>> You look like Pedro Pascal right there.
57:36>> He does a little bit. And in this one, he's he's he's playing cosplay uh trying to be chevara and walking into a to a big office building in downtown Vienna, Austria, 1975 >> with five henchmen with guns and took the place hostage and ran off with dozens of hostages out into the North African desert and ransomed them for millions of dollars. So crazy story.
58:02>> We'll come back to that. But okay, when you first walk in there and you're like, "Oh [ __ ] it's happening."
58:06>> Yeah. Yeah. First of all, were you meeting with them in like a holding room or something like that?
58:09>> Yeah. So, you think of a visitor's room in prison and it wasn't like that because you you imagine you've seen those in enough films where you know kind of there's all these chairs and maybe place people congregate. It was if viewers have a sense of the size of this studio. It was smaller than this by about by about half.
58:26>> It's about 14 and a half by 18.
58:29>> So, yeah, maybe that enough room for a table and four chairs around it. I was in one chair. Carlos gets ushered in and he sits right next to me. So, we're like two feet away and um >> dangerously close.
58:41>> And the guy, you know, it's not scary because it's it's uh you know, under very controlled conditions and he's been a prisoner and he's an old man for a long time. But kind of the moment of kind of like this is this is my research subject and it's like you've been trying to discover some new species and suddenly this is this animal is is that you've been spending your you years studying is is right there in front of you.
59:07>> You're Jurassic Park.
59:08>> Yeah. and you're you're looking at this uh you know T-Rex or whatever it is a velociaptor and and thinking man I can't believe I am two feet away from this guy that I've been obsessively researching for the last couple years and here he is. So it's pretty wild.
59:24>> How do you walk in like what was the vibe walking in and how's his English too? So his English is great and that's one of the things he's he's a smart guy and he speaks five languages at least and um including Russia because he was lived in Russia as a kid of course Spanish, English, French, Arabic and um so you hear him I'm I'm there first. So I'm kind of camped out in this little room just kind of waiting for him to show up and you can hear him coming down the hall because there's a commotion and everybody in prison knows Carlos the Jackal and they call him Carlos. And so you hear the French the guards saying,
59:57"Oh, M Carlos, bonjour, how are you?"
60:00And and then he he kind of knows them.
60:02So he's ragging him. And I describe the scene where he's kind of shadow boxing with one of them. And kind of, you know, pretend like he's beating the crap out of them. So he's very playful in that way with them. They they don't treat him like he's some, you know, arch murderer, but just like he's some famous guy who happens to live in the same place where they work. Thank you guys for checking out this clip. If you haven't already subscribed, please subscribe and hit the like button on this video. It is a huge, huge help. And if you'd like to check out this clip's full podcast episode, that link is in the description below or
60:31right here. And finally, you can follow me on Instagram and X by using the links in my description below.
Read the essay version →